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The Liberal Democrats If you meet Liberal Democrats trying to claim that after the local government elections that Britain now has three-party politics, tell them that after the European elections it actually has four-party politics; and their party is fourth.
I have long thought that Liberal-Democrats deserved to be rounded up and kept in high security prisons. However, a friend suggests a more useful alternative. Why don’t we use genetic engineering to breed a four-headed hydra with the likenesses of Hayek, von Mises, Friedman and Reagan? It could seek out Liberal Democrats, wrap itself around them, and suck the collectivism out of them. The discarded husks could then be shredded and recycled as packaging for the fast food industry.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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The Liberal Democrats have factions that Medusa has snakes. I have met Lib-Dems who are socialists, libertarians, old-style paternalistic Tories and even a few fascists. The bizarre thing is that there were some Lib-Dems who switched to vote for UKIP.
Another thing is that the Ginger Whinger is claiming that they reason they did so well (did they?) and Labour/Tories so badly is over the war. Alas, he fails to explain why the top 3 parties were all pro-war in one way or the other? You might also want to ask him if everyone was so pro-Europe in the Euro elections how in many regions the top 2 parties were the most Eurosceptic of the mainstream ones.
I suggested to a few Lib Dems that their party was the major loser of both elections on Thursday and was met by blank stares of shock. When I explained that they were the protest vote party and they were not getting the protest vote mouths opened in silent shock, a ‘Bbbbbbbuttt’ was heard. When I suggested that the reason the Tories didn’t do better is because it was the left of NL that moved to the Lib Dems and they would never vote Tory they perked up. ‘We won Manchester’ was the reply. Then after a few whispers ‘I mean Newcastle’. An easy mistake to make. Then I went for the kill and told them that their vote was static and that as they always did better in local rather than national elections they should be worried. They muttered about Charlie Kennedy and changed subject.
Ahh, Lib Dem baiting is great fun. I happen to be living with one, making it nice and easy 😀
The biggest impression that I get off them is their utter contempt for the general public. This should be obvious from the fuss they made about the constitution referendum – their view is that the masses can’t be trusted to make an informed decision, that we are too stupid to understand it and will just follow whatever the papers tell us, and so shouldn’t be allowed to have a referendum on the issue. When I mention how condescending and insulting that is, they then change tack and say it goes against democratic principles, that we elect people to make decisions for us so we shouldn’t have one. And whenever our house got political leaflets, the UKIP one was immediately scrunched up and thrown in the bin because ‘its all a load of b****cks. He left the BNP and RESPECT leaflets on the table though.
The contempt for ordinary people shines through on everything – we can’t be trusted to make decisions on how we eat or how we spend our money so the state has to. State-school pupils are too dumb to get to university so quotas are introduced. We can’t be trusted to have our own government so we need Europe’s. Small wonder, considering most of the liberals I know went to private school.
The contempt for ordinary people shines through on everything – we can’t be trusted to make decisions on how we eat or how we spend our money so the state has to.
Meanwhile, here in Cambridge, the Liberal Democrat run city council has insisted that the final decision on whether and how to transfer council housing stock out of direct council control will be left up to a full ballot of council tenants. This, despite the Labour government insisting that we don’t need a tenants’ ballot, and are perfectly entitled to just do whatever we want regardless of the tenants’ wishes.
This kind of concrete commitment to respecting the wishes of “ordinary people” concerning their own futures is indicative of the difference between, on the one hand, taking effective political action to increase people’s freedom, and on the other hand spinning out adolescent wank-fantasies about locking up millions of people on the basis of their political beliefs alone.
Aah, the good ‘ole Liberal Democrats. Since the retirement of Paddy Pantsdown, no longer Liberal or democratic.
Iain J Coleman writes:”Meanwhile, here in Cambridge, the Liberal Democrat run city council has insisted that the final decision on whether and how to transfer council housing stock out of direct council control will be left up to a full ballot of council tenants.”
I see. And that’s good is it? Letting the recipients of a form of welfare be the sole arbiters of its fate.
Good LibDem thinking, indeed.
Why the name ‘liberal’ when (like ALL modern liberal parties) they place little emphasis on actually promoting freedom? I cannot think of any policy that Lib Dems possess that would increase freedom in Britain, whether in a social or economic sense.
I blame Lloyd George. At least prior to him and people like him, liberalism actually WAS a freedom oriented ideology.
Well, I have to say Im pleasantly surprised, and I wish our lot were more like yours. My experience of local Lib Dems has been an attempt at a 39% council tax rise (the largest in the country), which led one council member to quit the Liberal Democrats after the budget was passed. Funny how they didn’t include that number in their election leaflets last year, and how they think that most people have several hundred quid just lying around, burning a hole in their pockets. For all Charles Kennedy’s grandstanding about how unfair the council tax is, how its hitting people hard, they go and pass the biggest raise in the country (obviously people aren’t being hit hard enough).
The last laugh however is on them. In the parish elections, they only won 4 out of 29 seats, with the Tories getting 20. Even worse, the Lib Dems looked set to possibly unseat Michael Howard at the next election (Ive spoken to LD members whove confirmed this is part of a decapitation strategy aimed at the tories nationally). Now we’ve had real experience of the Lib Dems I doubt they stand any chance at that.
Wait, I thought the point of the latest elections is that everybody hates Blair for siding with Bush. Are you trying to tell me that some people are trying to spin the election?
You’d have to say the decapitation strategy has worked – the LIb dems have well and truely lost their minds if they think they made a breakthrough.
At the last election MH got 45% of the vote so for him to lose to the Lib Dems, half the Labour vote would have to move to the Lib Dems and that’s if things stay the same.
When you talk to Lib Dems they usually admit it’s a lie designed to weaken Howard’s position. The usually follow it by a ‘we didn’t use to do things like that in the past’ remark.
2001 Results
In the locals last year the Lib Dems won with a massive swing, so I think it was a possibility. The Lib Dems are also by far the heaviest campaigners in the area, so much so that they even campaign when there isnt an election. By contrast, Labour are barely visible. Labour didn’t even offer any candidates in the town/parish elections.
They might say its just a scare story, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it here.
This site is quite a good read – even if half of the newspaper links don’t work any more.
Interestingly, some of the things it criticises might appeal to hard-line libertarians…
Whenever I hear the phrase ‘Liberal Democratic Party’ I am reminded of Gibbon’s quip about the Holy Roman Empire.
Oliver Kamm has written several times of how despicable the LibDems are at the level of local politics. I can attest to this, having been a Conservative volunteer in the ’80’s and early ’90’s.
Gillies: You mean Voltaire’s quip.
When I were at Hull like, the Tories, the Labour, even some of the more leftie parties would party together have tearing three shades of shite out of each other in the student union chamber. Who were the only ones who refused to have a drink with us and socialise?
You guessed it the Young Lib-Dems.
If you really want to have some fun, tell a Lib-Dem you are a libertarian. It really winds em’ up.
Novel idea: why not a sort of encyclopedia-entry style blog post explaining for the American audience who/what in hell the LD party is? I’ve yet to find anything enlightening in the press on that.
Beck: they are the remnants of the old Liberal party combined with the Social Democrat party, run by Charles Kennedy. They just about manage to squeeze the definition libertarian to include themselves, but they fall in to the lefty tendencies – political correctness, the endless cult of the ‘minority’, tax-n-spend etc. Some of us live in hope that they will read Ayn Rand, see sense and boot out their lefty-socialist fringe. Will it happen? It’s possible, but you’d have more luck in Vegas…
Beck: http://www.libdems.org.uk/
They don’t seem to have much fixed ideology. Their traditional British role has been as the protest-vote party of the urban middle classes. They used to position themselves at a mid-point between Labour (equiv. US Socialist) and Conservative (equiv. US Republican) parties. Since Labour moved from an ideological left position to a poll-driven “left centrist” (equiv. US Democrat) position, the LibDems have abandoned their claim on that ground and moved to take up Labour’s old place on the far left.
Having asked the Secretary General of the European Peoples Party why they didn’t just get rid of the Tories and replace them with the Lib Dems, after all their policy platforms are indistinguishable the fellow laughed .
“No chance, we are a peoples party, all our member parties have support amongst all social classes – have you ever met a working class Lib Dem?”.
It took a German to point this out to me. I have looked in vain ever since.
The Lib Dems wouldn’t be as strong as they are in Southwark, Liverpool and Newcastle without a few dole-ites on their side.
On Newsnight in 1997, Gore Vidal pondered what Asquith would have made of the Lib Dems (that was in the days of Ashdown).
Vidal talked to Charles Kennedy, and asked him if his party was “still true to the principals of Asquith and Lady Violet”…a painting of Lady Violet hung imposingly above Kennedy and Vidal.
Lady Violet was a truly great Liberal, one sadly forgotten by historians. Ashdown was mostly true to Lady Violet’s principals, Kennedy patently is not.
The Liberal Party used to produce political giants… Gladstone, Asquith, Lloyd George, Grimond…
If Asquith or Gladstone had been leader during Kennedy’s rein, the Lib-Dems would be set for well over 100 seats now.